Major depression: Causal attribution and social adjustment

Major Depression has serious implications for patients in terms of suffering, cost and potential mortality. The purpose of this descriptive exploratory study was to investigate causal attribution and the relationships among causal dimensions (locus of causality, controllability, stability), psychological properties (self-esteem, mastery, expectancy) and social adjustment in women with Major Depression. Weiner's attribution theory was utilized to frame this investigation.;The sample consisted of 100 women with Major Depression with a mean age of 48.55, the majority of whom were married (66%), were employed (60%), took medication (98%) and had a depressed blood relative (81%). The participants (100%) provided explanations for their Major Depression. These attributions were categorized and distributed thus: life events (44%), self-blame (16%), biological (15%), mixed model (13%) and parental behavior (12%). The majority of the participants attributed their depression to life events.;In this sample, no relationship was found between locus of causality and self-esteem. As the perception of personal control was increased, the sense of mastery was enhanced. When the cause was perceived as unstable, the subjects were more optimistic. The subjective meaning that Weiner's causal dimensions held for these women with Major Depression is unknown. Internal causality may have had different meaning for those women who attributed the cause of their depression to biological causes than to those who blamed themselves.;The results of the Hierarchical Multiple Regression analysis indicated that the level of depression, causal dimensions and psychological properties accounted for 64% of the variance in social adjustment. Level of depression accounted for 49% of the variance in social adjustment, locus of causality 1%, personal control 2%, external control 2%, stability 0%, self-esteem 7%, mastery 1% and expectancy 2%. This finding should be interpreted with caution as there were strong interrelationships among the measurements of level of depression, psychological properties and social adjustment.